


Seven Summers

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-14
Updated: 2006-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven summers sing the legend of Leo McGarry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Summers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for absinthe_shadow in the Leo McGarry ficathon, 2006.
> 
> Timelines from Josh's childhood up to 5.16 'Disaster Relief'.

Seven summers sing you the legend of Leo McGarry, and you cannot quite believe that the memories have taken the trouble to frame themselves like that; so neatly. If you reach for them, they disappear, leaving Leo standing in your mind like a well-known statue: disappearing behind the cars and the tourists and all the other things in your day which scream more loudly for your attention. You have caught glimpses of Leo through windows; from behind desks that always seem a little too large; he appears as the signature scrawled on your uppermost memo. These images stay, instead of real memories. In them you find, when you let yourself look, a small, dapper man, the same age as as your father would be now, in whom you find it very difficult to locate any colour, except the red handkerchief folded inside his top blazer pocket.

Today you see him, red silk catching your peripheral vision on your way through to the Bullpen, sitting in the Roosevelt Room, perfectly still. It takes a moment to stop, to stare; you don't dare stop longer.

Today you choose to remember the handkerchief, and the knot of Leo's tie - also red - bright against the skin, drawn tight into Leo's neck. Today, you choose not to remember that you know the texture of that skin, and its taste, and how the scent of Leo's cologne lingers underneath his jaw, sweet and old-fashioned; its smell settling on your tongue every time you kiss, and every time in between. You will know it again.

You go back to your office, passing Donna and hardly looking at her as she hands you a stack of five or six thick briefing books. She walks along with you to the office door, walking backwards in heels, speaking, saying your name once, twice -

"_Josh_?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you even listening?"

"Yeah, sure ... " You look up at her, stopping in the doorway to your office, "What?"

"As I was saying, Josh - "

"Donna ... "

"Okay, okay! I was only saying that I'm leaving the office ... for about an hour."

"Uh huh."

"It's a very hot date, Josh."

"Right."

"Don't you want to know his name?"

"Not really, no."

"It's not the man at the cappuccino stand, if you're wondering."

"I'm pretty sure I wasn't."

"Josh, are you -?"

You shake your head, smiling kind at her.

The door shuts on Donna's concern, but gently. You have no space in your mind right now for Donna's strategies, obviously the result of a quiet conversation with CJ sometime last night or this morning, nor for the high notes of sympathy in her jokes. You push out the sight and scent of her white-blonde hair too, so pale that under the lights it seems almost colourless; back past your memories. You sit behind the desk, then turn the chair so it faces the window, and look out over the Rose Garden.

You can smell the summer coming; it smells a little like smoke.

*

You bow your head into this man's throat, this new adult in your new house. You feel a hand - small and stiff - clench in your hair and begin to stroke. You don't know why you're crying, not really, but you miss your sister now that the spring has turned to summer and there's no Joanie to pinch your arm and flick water into your face. You still don't understand where she has gone.

The man's hand is stroking your hair still and rocking you, slight, almost shaky; without rhythm, and you take in a deep breath against his neck and smell an aftershave unlike the one your father keeps in the high bathroom cabinet, which you have stolen down from the shelf and split a little of on the tile. You smell smoke, but lately you always smell smoke and you try not to think of it having anything to do with this man, who is holding you so tight. And something else, sharp and sour, following on the warm breath which is falling on your face as you look up into a rounded chin and eyes surrounded with creases.

You wipe your eyes with the back of your fist and try to smile bravely. Mr. McGarry grins back at you, "You're gonna be alright, Josh," he says.

*

Your father, not as sociable as your mother and on the whole negatively disposed towards people, rarely has his friends over to the house. Your mom fills the garden and the kitchen full of her friends, who have only stopped ruffling your hair these last few years, now that you are taller than most of them. You like them well enough, or your pretend to, but you prefer your dad's friends - solid men, existing in the whorls of smoke and heavy conversation which fill your father's study when he has them over. Your eye is always drawn to the cut-glass tumblers full of the scotch which you can smell from the doorway of the study. You took a sip from one once, and winced from the taste; going back to the kitchen and drowning it in milk.

Not so Mr. McGarry, who is sitting with your dad in the study today, a glass in his hand. He's grinning, and you stare at his face, now formed of deep, dark lines and the white of his teeth and skin. You blink, your eyes suddenly dry, but you keep staring and all the while press your hand - for some reason you've no idea of - hard over your breastbone. You find it difficult to duck away, out of the room, before you are seen.

When Mr. McGarry leaves, a couple of hours later, you are in the garden. He walks out of your door and sees you. He raises a hand and waves before he saunters off, his steps wide, rocking from one foot to another as he goes to his car. You wave back. You watch the car drive away and stare down the street as it disappears.

*

The old house - the second house - seems to absorb summer into its walls and bricks. You find it easier to laugh here, and that the laughter comes out sweeter, cleaner. You take particular pleasure in remembering the huge and riveting volume on tort reform which you have left open on its face on top of your bedsheets. You look up at the sky and stretch your arms into the sunshine. Your mom ruins the image by calling our to you and offering you lemonade. You are about to yell _no thanks, mom!_ back to her, strip off your shirt and lie in the grass when you notice that someone else is standing there with her, a smallish man, in a full suit. Leo McGarry is here again.

You can talk like men now, all together in your father's study, and you can suppress the wince that still passes through you, constricting your throat, when you sip scotch from the single glass which you are allowed. You even manage to avoid talking about school and finals and GPAs for a while, until your dad brings it up, with a white gleam of unmistakable pride in his eyes. You pass off all the same things you usually brag about, knowing that the achievements will turn to ashes in your mouth, that acing your finals will hardly seem an achievement to an ex-pilot, to a man whose conversation is interrupted by a call from the Minority Leader's office. How they have your father's number, you don't quite know.

Later, when you are five minutes from excusing yourself from the conversation, re-remembering the textbook on your bed, Leo asks:

"So, do you know where you'd like to go?"

"Er, I'm sorry, sir?"

"The scholarship, Josh, have you got your eye on someplace?"

"Oh ... no, not really. England maybe, or France." You pause, then, "Probably not France."

Leo grins, his laugh a tickle under your throat, "I guess after Harvard most places seem a little disappointing?"

You smile back at him, and wonder if you can really be that transparent. You excuse yourself soon after and you don't hear Leo leave the house; are only aware of the faint smell of exhaust fumes from his vintage car coming in through your open window. It smells like summer.

*

You watch him turn towards you through the smoke of a rare cigarette, and you see his eyes are different - unable to fix on a single point for more than a few moments, unable to keep from staring back up at you. When he takes his hands out from his pockets, you see they are shaking. He comes towards you, walking just the same - like a sailor just stepped off deck, not like a pilot, not like a politician. You stare at his tie and notice, late, that it is loose around his neck and that you can see the white of his undershirt.

You kissed him last night, or maybe he kissed you. It seems too long ago to remember now. Last night, he tasted of promise and power and you still have those tastes on your tongue; tonight his breath has soured and his voice has changed so that when he says your name, a low plea in his mouth, you can hardly recognise it.

"Call Jenny, okay?" you say, your voice sounding too high to you, shrill in the heavy silence.

"No, Josh - "

"I - I can't, Leo ... I'm sorry."

And, suddenly and surely, you don't want to stand here. You shift your feet and move nearer to the doorway, passing your hand through and through your hair. You open the door and all but run through, closing it on the sound of your name.

An hour later, you come back, and knock on his door. He doesn't answer but the door is open, and you slip inside after a quick look around the corridor, and flick on the light. There is a glass and a bottle on the credenza, and a smaller one, empty on the floor, and Leo, on the bed. You stand with your back against the door and listen to the heave of your own breath, high in your chest.

The legend is broken, cracks in a glass. As you strip off his jacket and shirt all you can see are the marks of age, the dark hollows in his neck and the curve of his stomach. You pass your hand over his hair, and kiss his forehead. You leave a tall glass of water on the side-table, and hope he recovered enough in the morning to know that he ought to drink another three just like it.

You go out, flick off the light and lock the door. You never speak of it.

*

You don't see him standing there, hidden in the darkness of Hoynes HQ. He disappears when he chooses, reappears to suit himself. He's wearing a red silk tie and you are thinking about magic in the middle of disorientation and words that ought to stir you, but don't.

You stare at him a moment longer than you should.

You remember that day, on the Capitol steps, wrong. You remember Leo standing in the sun, his skin like smooth, fine-carved stone and his slight silhouette filling out, lined in black against the Washington Monument and the water. But you remember Leo on the steps too, where you know he did not stand, his hands still by his sides; tall, and his grin gleaming like quicksilver. You know it was him standing there; that you are seeing a scene which never occurred with too much clarity.

But, as you fall asleep remembering on the flight to New York, your steps and Leo's seem interchangeable, echoing each other on the marble.

*

None of them really know what to say to you when you get back from your father's funeral. CJ hugs you and Sam does too, Toby mutters something you don't quite catch. Donna graces you with her wide deep eyes, full of sympathy which you don't really feel you need, or deserve.

Leo doesn't say anything, and he certainly doesn't hug you. His expectations shore you up, unchanged by death, cutting you only as much slack as you cut yourself. There is still a job to be done; finished.

You sit together in the night on the bus when all the others are asleep or screwing in silence somewhere near the back - you don't care to know; you don't speak. But when he turns to you and tilts his head (are you okay?) you find yourself raising a hand to his face, stroking your fingers over his cheek and his mouth. You pull away - horrified - when the image of what you've just done hits you, but Leo finds your hand and holds it. He strokes your hair.

You don't sleep together exactly - there's no room for sleeping in your bed or his - and its not the best sex you've ever had, but you store every touch safe in your mind. He's heavier than you expected against your back, full inside you and pushing hard, and he is silent, slipping like the sunlight from your body.

You kiss him, slowly, gently, sure you must be doing something wrong and no longer able to pretend that you don't think it. But he moans your name and you taste the win coming; summer in November.

*

You reflect that it is winter, these days, that brings you to Leo's bed. You bear some of the same marks as him now and the cold air isn't kind to you - making the pain in your back throb a little closer, reminding you of gunshots and police sirens. It's Christmas in a few days but you go to him to find warmth and a few more hours of sunlight. He doesn't always give them, sometimes he's part of a night even darker than yours, but lately he has, lately he has been holding you closer than before.

The hotel staff, all of them it seems, know who you are now. They let you through without comment, and you are sure they know more than your name. Another night you might care more; not tonight. You walk along the corridor to his rooms feeling your steps bounce what seems like whole feet into the air. You knock, and when he says come in your hand shakes reaching for the handle.

"Josh?"

"Hey," is all you can manage to say to him, and you can't move from the doorway. Your head is full of noise and you find you can't see more than the pale gold of Leo's skin and hair, light next to the dark of his suit. He catches you when you fall forward from the doorway.

*

You thought, you honestly thought, that this stage of apprenticeship was over - you've elected your guy twice, you made it through gunshots twice (okay, you weren't actually the one in the path of the bullet that second time), and it looks like you might even get a second opportunity to screw up with Amy Gardner. You thought graduation day was long past.

But it seems that your life comes back to Leo's face - pale, and angry, but not surprised, not for a moment. You think of words you can use to explain and apologise, but they turn stale before you've spoken them, and you know that you don't have anything of weight, only excuses. He knows it too.

You promise yourself that you will find something, out in the night, and you'll turn from the glow of Capitol Hill, back straight. What you find, later in the night, is Leo.

You start with: "I didn't plan to come."

He looks at you, wrapped in an expensive-looking dressing gown. He says, "Are you ever gonna quit this, Josh?"

You shift in the doorway, foot to foot.

"You screwed up," Leo says, "It was a mistake - a big mistake. But it's _over_ now."

"Toby already told me to suck it up," you say, trying a smile.

"Yeah, well, he's right!"

"Leo - "

"Josh!"

"I don't know what to say."

"You don't need to say anything - look around you, is this my office you're standing in?"

"I'm still sorry."

"I know, Josh," he says, his voice low and soft. "I know."

He understands his role just as well as you do, and he will always open his hands for you. You don't know if you should feel sickened that he can kiss you as he might his son one minute and unzip your pants in the next, but you don't; you only push harder against him, searching for comfort, if not absolution.

Tonight you know you have to remember him, consciously, and not only as a store of unconnected senses and images, lost in the day and brought back only at night. Tonight you think you should make an effort to remember something before you lose it, as you are sure you will. You smelt smoke on the warm night air and you can smell it again on Leo's neck as his head tilts back and you put your fingers into the hollows of his throat. You choose not to close your eyes.

You let Leo push you back on the bed, let him strip back shirt and tie and pull off the rest. You turn your head from his face when your body is bare, suddenly ashamed of your nearly-faultless skin and it's one scar, even now disappearing into a shade of pink hardly distinguishable from the rest, showing up only as the light falls on your chest. Leo smiles at you and presses a hand flat into your hair and a kiss to your forehead. You look up at him.

He looks older than he is, worn, but in odd flashes of the light, where the shadow frames the diagonal of his cheekbone and the lamplight takes the age away from his face, you see someone you have never known. You watch those moments create their own myths, independent of your interference, and watch him become taller, broader, more distant, full of colour.

When he lifts you up, his hands steady and warm, you know this is the end. He sinks into you and it is gentle, something of tenderness. Not forgiveness, but goodbye written by the hard, final press of his hips across yours. When your mouth opens with his name, he strokes his thumb along your lower lip and puts his hand in your hair again, brushing it further back on your forehead.

This eighth summer has closed the legend, and all you can smell is his cologne, still the same on his throat, under your mouth.


End file.
